Virginia

EVEN now, from time to time, there appears in comic papers a figure labeled ‘Frenchman,’ — middling short, round, and sleek, with waxed moustache and imperial, — whom all the half-educated know to be immoral and witty. But whenever I think of Virginia — for, if one is to translate her name at all, that is what one must call her — I feel that she is much more representative of France than that labeled figure ever was.

No doubt her name is partly responsible for this feeling. To an American, a Latin, a Celt, there would be nothing out of the way in such a name for a woman. But in England, the real Perfide Albion of Business and the Bible, of Wilberforce and Palmerston, it savors of the old-fashioned, as the real France savors of the time before England drifted out of the European Comity of Nations to pursue her own peculiar path.

The very way in which I made her acquaintance was one which could not have occurred in England. It was thus: I was traveling with a French friend, whose friendship dated from our mutual boyhood. That is to say, though we spoke more openly and affectionately to each other than two Englishmen would have done, we probably understood each other less thoroughly. Or perhaps it was because we dimly felt that, deep impassable barrier within ourselves that we were so frank and cordial. Anyhow, alighting to change at one of those small junctions typical of the third of France north of the winegrowing districts, — a rather sooty little station, deeply interested in anthracite and beetroot, — he did something that, in spite of a fair knowledge of him and of France, astonished me. We had strolled up to the newspaper kiosk. Not the bookstall. It was not the same thing at all — not a small branch of some gigantic firm which dispatched to it every day what was said to be selling in London. It was the private venture of some obscure person who used individual judgment in the choice of the stock.

Occupied with the wares displayed, I heard my friend break out into one of those shrill exclamations that I had learned to overlook in him because he had never been taught that they were not good form. He took me by the arm. ‘My friend, allow me to introduce an old flame of mine!’

Was that what he said? Not a bit of it. What he said was: ‘Mon cher, permettez que je vous présente une de mes anciennes maîtresses!’ But I cannot translate it better than I have, for a more literal translation, though nearer to the words, would be so unthinkably far from the spirit.

Used, as I considered myself to be, to my friend and to French ways, I had to adjust myself. In England does one introduce the news vender to one’s friends? I think not usually. But then, in England the news vender is frequently a boy, rarely more than a shop assistant. I had only to glance at the person whom my friend had thus brusquely brought into the circle of my bowing acquaintance to see that she was something quite different. She was a woman, not a girl, but a woman who had been a woman ever since she was sixteen — had never had, I think, an adolescence, but had passed from childhood abruptly into a stern school of life to which, with blunt acquiescence and perfect competence, she had immediately adjusted herself. And she had never changed from that first adjustment. As I now saw her, so had she always been.

With us in England, conservatism has to be a political creed. With her, in France, it was something implicit in the mental composition. France has had her Revolution. Virginia had had her moment of transition. Individually as nationally, the change had been so thorough that its effects were still deemed sufficient.

There were physical incidents which assisted this state of affairs. Virginia had that sort of dark brown hair which grays least and latest of all colors that cover the human head. Her teeth were good, and she had what schoolboys call a ‘ pudden’ face — round, fleshy, of an even pallor, and with no marked redness of lip or sharpness of feature. It might easily have been a stupid-looking face, had it not been lighted by two sharp, round little gray eyes. If she ever blinked, I never saw it, and I should not be incredulous if told that she slept with her eyes open. Again, she might have looked stupid had she let her underlip droop or her jaw hang. But, except in speech, her lips were firmly closed and her chin was thrust a little forward.

I peeped inside her little kiosk, an erection that in England I should have called a ‘box o’ tricks.’ Not unjustly. It was. In the short second or so which was all my island politeness would admit of my spending staring into someone else’s life, I saw a tiny cylinder of match boarding with a door and glazed windows, obscured by periodicals of every sort and kind hanging against them, except for the small space reserved for the proprietor’s face while in parley with the public. Inside were a stool with a cushion upon the seat, a little black stove, glowing red, and one of those flat baskets, in which lay a dog and a cat, both small, both mongrels beyond any hope of redemption, and both lying curled up, one against the other.

‘Madame is fond of animals?’ said I, politely.

She regarded me without any expression.

‘But no, monsieur, those are my little companions.’

I retired in confusion. Of course she was not fond of animals. She was fond of those two little beasts because they were hers.

My friend, however, was more used to and less interested in her. He did not speculate about her; he asked plain direct questions, and she replied with answers to match. There was about their short conversation that static quality which I believe is more characteristic of French than of English colloquy. They took each other for granted, had done so for years, and were not anticipating any fresh developments.

‘He is dead, then.’

‘Yes, monsieur.’

‘You went to the funeral, I bet?’

‘But no, I did not go.’

‘Not truly?’

‘Perfectly. I had said that I would not meet him living; why should I run after him dead ? ’

Our train came in, and we performed those athletic feats necessary to anyone who would board with luggage a French train in any but the largest stations. Panting and perspiring, we settled ourselves at length on the seats. Then, for some reason, there was a delay. Someone blew a tin trumpet and there was the necessary shouting, but the train did not start. I had leisure to observe Virginia. Her face was dimly visible in the twilight of her kiosk. Her glance turned, I could imagine, to her stove; to the saucepan upon it, in which leeks were boiling; then to her knitting. Then, as some customer bought his two or three sous’ worth of papers, that face, as it were, came to the surface, pallid as the underside of a fish; she pursed her lips ever so little over the giving of change, regarding the silver handed her — and the notes even more so — with fully the necessary suspicion; and again her face, with arm and shoulder in their garment of vague gray check, — I should not like to commit myself as to its nature; it was something between a dressing gown and an ulster, — disappeared into the half light peculiar to her habitat.

Eventually the train did start, but I found I could not leave her behind. I questioned my friend.

‘You have known that person a long while?’

‘I believe you. Virginia, she is like the good God — eternal!’

‘She is always there, doing just that?’

‘Necessarily.’

‘Even on Sunday?’

‘Naturally. The station does not shut, except for some hours of the night. While it is open, she is there!’

‘She does not go to church?’

‘It is probable. But the church is open from five-thirty to midnight. Thus she has time.’

’ It does not seem much of a life. ’

My friend looked at me, and remembered that I came from a country where they had invented a thing called in England ‘the eight-hour day’ and in France ‘the English week’ — that and a whole lot of things like insurance, pensions, and Factory Acts.

‘Ah, you must remember we are not so rich here as you in England. We have to work harder.’

‘As you like. But what does it amount to? What will happen when she can no longer sell papers?’

‘Oh, as for that, at the worst there is always the Refuge of the Aged. I do not think it will come to that. She has, without doubt, her savings.’

‘I hope so. She must cheat herself at each meal to have even that!’

‘In France one has the habit. Saving — it is our economic salvation.’

‘It is very hard on the individual.’

‘There is something you will never understand. The little that all these have, it is their very own. They do not say “Thank you” to anyone!’

This was a floorer. Obviously true; and no answer except to say, ’Change your way of life.’ And what good is it when one nationality says that to another? But I was still interested.

‘What do you suppose makes a woman take to a job like that?'

‘My faith! The same thing as in England — a void in the interior.’

‘Yes, but don’t you see, that woman would be so much better off as a servant or employee of someone else.’

‘It is possible, but she will never believe you.’

‘I suppose not. I gather she had some tragedy in her life?’

‘ You mean — ’

‘I overheard your conversation with her. She has lost a relative?’

‘Oh, that. It was not a tragedy. It was very ordinary.’

‘How?’

‘She has lost her brother; but she is not sorry.’

‘Family quarrels?’

‘If you wish. Virginie and Léon Debreu were left orphans. Their father and mother had a little shop in the rue de la Clef d’Or. Léon demanded the partition of the estate and there was no legal obstacle, so he got it. Virginie said that she would never see him again, and she never did. Relatives tried to bring them together, but it was useless. Léon,

I think, repented of his hardness, and would have made it up, but she would not.’

‘But they lived in the same town?’

‘Yes, and Léon frequently entered the station, on account of his business.’

‘How did she manage, then, not to see him?’

‘She said to herself that he existed no longer.’

‘And now he is dead?’

‘Yes. What she had always said would happen arrived at last. It was not a miracle.’

‘And she did n’t go to his funeral?’

‘No, she did not go.’

‘They were both very hard!’

‘One is like that in France.’

That trip came to an end a few days later, and on our return journey we changed again at the junction. It was late, but the watchful face was on duty in the kiosk, so sited as to obtain the light of one of the station lamps without need of more particular illumination. My friend saw me peering in that direction and supplemented my thoughts.

‘Yes, she is still there.’

‘What strikes me about her is that there is not a soul in the world who cares if she is or not!’

‘What would you? She has no relatives left.’

‘And no memories of anyone, since her father and mother died?’

‘As to that, one never knows. But it is not probable, since she had no dowry.’

‘It seems a lonely life.’

‘It is in her character. She would not go well together with another.’

Years passed and much happened before I went that way again, and went alone. But no revolution had struck the railway system of France, and I had to get out at that station in order to have the pleasure presently of getting on an even slower train. I walked up to the newspaper kiosk and, seeing a strange face at the wicket, asked for Mademoiselle Debreu. I had hardly uttered the question before it was answered — as questions are often answered in France, as if it were a public duty — by three people. One was a woman of the same category but without the character of the Virginia she had supplanted. One was a pompous but cheery commercial traveler. One was an incredibly dirty old man who could be perceived twenty metres away to be the lamp cleaner. They took the job of informing me in a sort of round, as though singing a catch.

‘Ah, that person — she is deceased.’

‘It isn’t common sense, but it is true all the same,’ continued the second.

‘You may say that she began to make old bones,’ added the lamp cleaner, looking like one of those people to be seen in Cruikshank’s plates, but never in the England that any of us remember. Whether it was the effect of environment or no, I went on, to my own astonishment: —

‘Did anyone go to her funeral?’

It started them off again. Round they went.

‘Oh yes, sir. She had superb obsequies!’

‘The College of Orphans paraded!’

I had a vision of little boys in blue and little girls in brown, marching two and two, but the third part —of the Lampiste — overrode it.

‘I will explain that to you, sir. She lost her two little companions; you had seen them, sir? Yes; well, not wishing to take others, she gave herself to good works.'

And round again: —

‘She was a pious lady.’

‘She had not much, but she gave it,’ went on the commercial, throwing floods of light on the parable of the widow’s mite. Of course, the virtue was in the triumph over a lifelong habit of holding tight.

The descendant of Eros concluded: ‘One might say, she made a good ending! ’

For me, at any rate, that is true.